2. Branded

Sweat drips from my chin onto the foam mat beneath my feet. My strawberry blond hair clings to my face. I can hardly breathe. I glance at the first year recruits beside me to see if they looked as exhausted as I do. Seventeen of us in all are scattered in rows, not close to being even like the fourth year recruits had been a few weeks ago when I finished orientation.

We're taking up the middle of the room with dozens of older recruits lining the walls to work with free weights and countless others occupying the treadmills and bicycles. A whir fills the room, the clunk of weights rising and falling.

"Again."

We bend our knees to drop, land in a crouch, and jump back up with arms stretching into the air. It continues until it feels as if my heart has pounded out of my chest and fallen at my feet.

Why did I think I could do this? We haven't even hit the difficult training yet, the weeks away from our family in hostile conditions at training camp, never knowing if the officers might pick us up and take us in for interrogation training. My stomach tightens at the thought of departing in just a few short days.

The workout continues for another hour, ending in stretching. I wilt against the ground with my hands cupped around my right foot and catch my first good breath. I sit back with arms behind me and pull my shoulders back in a stretch. There's whispering beside me.

A boy to my left watches me while his friend leans his way. "They're not real tits. That's the boy who had surgery."

The one who'd been looking at me guffaws and punches his friend in the arm. I clench my teeth. When my parents first signed their loyalty pledge, the government had used gene editing to remove our risk for heart disease and diabetes. And they'd given me a free gender-confirming surgery, using bioware to alter my body at a chromosomal level.

I rise up to walk away when I pause. I'm a recruit for the Special Operations Force. The time for cowering from a fight is behind me now. Raising my chin, I swivel around to face the two boys whose mouths drop when I look at them with my hands on my hips.

"They are the same kind of breasts as every other girl in this room, actually. I had my surgery before puberty. Even if I hadn't, they'd still be real, and you'd still be the losers who've never touched a pair."

"I've touched some," the boy who'd insulted me says.

"Sorry." The one who'd check me out turns, clambers to his feet, and rushes out of the room, his friend at his heels.

Taking in a deep breath, I whip around to see a group of fourth year recruits staring at me. Heat fills my cheeks. They know now and that'd changed things for me too many times before.

"Damn," a lady with thick brunnette hair says. The black uniform marking her year looks crisp and untouched. Green Eyes sits beside her, his steady stare making my sweat turn cold.

Those boys hadn't been the first to turn their nose up at me after learning that I'm trans. Green Eyes probably had no interest in me in the first place, but if he did, then he wouldn't see me the same now.

I refuse to return to the confusion and grief that had ruled my early teens, when I questioned why I'd been born this way, and whether I'd sinned by confirming my gender. Being treated like an atrocity has a way of doing that to a person.

Before anyone else can mock me, I continue to walk, keeping my chin up, and enter the showers where I strip down in a stall, not once checking my chest to ask myself if I really was good enough. I blast the water on cold and relish the chills tearing through my body after sweating bullets during training.

I lather my hair up with soap, running my fingers through the long tangles. An image of Mama tracing my jaw after surgery fills my mind.

"Good morning, my beautiful girl."

The ground beneath me shakes and I fall against the slick wall of the shower, crashing to my knees. Pain flashes through my legs as a rumble fills the air and everything shakes again.

Crawling toward the shower curtain, I reach blindly for a towel, wrap it around my body, and drag myself out of the shower as another round of quaking hits. My towel hangs heavy over my body, soaked by the water still pouring from overhead.

Several other girls face the same predicament, some half clothed and others naked. The lights flicker. Water bursts out of one of the shower heads and shoots out of the stall. We all gather together in the middle of the room to ride out the shaking.

Everything goes still. I wrap my towel around myself tighter, shivering so badly that my teeth clatter. Water pools on the ground from the broken pipe in one of the showers.

"What do you think it was?" A girl beside me asks.

I swallow hard and push away the memories that threaten. "A warning shot."

Everyone begins to talk at once but I rush for the exit, limping with pain in each step. I glance down to see my knees already bruising and blood dripping from a scrape.

Equipment and weights have fallen over. Two recruits lay trapped beneath a thick beam of weights connected to a power rack. A quick glance and I see several injuries already. Despite this, all is silent, save for the muffled moans of one of the trapped boys whose ankle lays at an odd angle.

Everyone is staring at the center of the room where two members of the police force stand. Pistols in hand, they wait patiently as if to ensure that everyone's attention is on them.

Minutes that feel like hours pass. Finally, one of them speaks.

"We picked up activity in this sector. Someone within a hundred blocks has communicated with enemy forces."

His bushy brows cast shadows over his eyes. He raises a thick finger to point. Pain pierces my heart. His finger is aimed at me.

"Come."

I'm holding my towel with a grip so fierce that my knuckles turn white. I begin to walk forward, feeling the stare of every recruit in the room turn to me.

That's when I see her. The girl who'd asked what happened in the shower room, walking up alongside me. We both slow as we meet each other's eyes. Terror fills the space between us.

"You." The officer points again. "The indecent one."

I hadn't even noticed that she was still unclothed. A tear slides down her face as she drifts forward without me.

His eyes roam down her body. I have to press my fist against my mouth to keep from getting sick.

"On your knees."

The officer removes his wand from his side. A cry raises up, all of the recruits as one.

Fourth years from every corner of the room sprint forward, moving like a unified body. The officer presses the wand against her neck. Two recruits move within inches of grabbing distance: Green Eyes and the brunette.

A click.

The life vanishes from the girls eyes. Her body collapses into the arms of the brunette as she falls to her knees.

Green Eyes has his fist reared back and one arm reaching for the officer. The wand has snapped up to meet his face. The fourth year recruit freezes, arm still raised.

A smile crawls onto the officers face as he takes Green Eye's wrist in his hand and lowers it to his side.

"For anyone in this room who may be flirting with our enemies..." he turns to look down on his victim. "Remember what happens to the indecent."

The officer snaps, turns on his heel, and marches out the front doors without anyone impeding him. His partner follows in suite.

No one moves. Not at first. Slowly, one by one, recruits begin to help the injured. The few instructors in the room rush to the recruits who are trapped and to the girl who lay dead.

It could have been me. I'm indecent as well. I'm indecent and I'm a traitor like everyone in this room.

Green Eyes is the only one who hasn't moved. He'd come so close to saving her. The moment will haunt him forever. Of this, I am certain.

Everything blurs. I return to the showers where water floods the floor in an untouched pool. Paying no heed, I find my clothes, pull them onto my damp body, and run all the way home without stopping.

If they had bothered to check for marks, surely I would have been chosen over the unclothed recruit. They leave a brand on the inside of our cheeks after the surgery and the gene editing, as if to remind us that we will never truly be one of them, and we are allowed to exist only at their discretion. I've seen us killed before, chosen before the others.

At home I sit at the kitchen table feeling numb. Mama dishes out the last of the soup. The serving platter where meat or bread would go if Papa had been able to get any lies empty again.

My stomach rolls as I force down a spoonful of broth.

"I still can't believe you did this to us, Skye." Papa's voice sounds like a growl as he hooks both elbows on the table and slurps his soup. "I don't get it. If you wanted to be a soldier why'd you go through all the work to stop bein' a boy?"

I bite the mark on the inside of my cheek, my stare remaining on my soup. Since breaking the news about my recruitment, Mama hasn't said a word and Papa hasn't stopped yelling.

"You better be on the right side. Every thing we got we owe to them. You ought to get that better than anyone. You'd still be luggin' around a dick if they didn't take care of it for free."

"Thank you for the reminder, Papa." The recruit's lifeless eyes fill my mind. "They were kind enough to allow me to be myself." There's the threat of violence in there Papa refuses to see. A branded woman is a woman who can be hunted. A family who has been given everything they have can lose everything they have. He's chosen blindness and I cannot change his mind.

I want to spend our last few nights together enjoying our family time, but I have broken what is left of our spirit. The ghost of the girl haunts me. Days crawl by and I depart for training camp with a terse hug from Papa and few words from Mama.

Outside of our apartment people in black government-issued cars honk at one another, inching forward. Pedestrians choke the walkways. Repairs to windows and roofs have already been made after earthquake. We bear invisible scars of their control over us.

When I reach the office and I walk to my spot in line before the parked bus, I find all of of the fourth years waiting but only two other fresh recruits.

Twenty minutes pass and no one shows up. The doors to the bus open for us to board.

"Where is everyone?" I ask.

The fourth years stare at me silently, though the pain in their eyes makes it feel as though they are wailing. They all stare at me except for Green Eyes. His gaze is in the concrete.

No one ever answers me. I realize they must not have believed any of us would show. The boy who'd insulted me and a girl I had yet to speak to reach out and take my hands in theirs. We stand in a short line, our differences in the past, and our future unknown.

Nothing will stop me. Certainly not another unjust death. I lament that I had never asked the dead girl her name.

This would be the most intense training of my life and I was ready now more than ever. I wouldn't return the same girl. I may not even return. Every camp carried casualties. The risk paid off in the field, evidenced by our lower death rate than other similar forces.

The moment I step foot on that bus, I will have been born into a new life and my old one will lie in a shallow, unmarked grave.

As I moved passed Green Eyes, I slow, and his eyes raise up to mine.

He never had any hope of saving the girl, but you wouldn't know that seeing the determination in his eyes that day. We say nothing. I move on, but his eyes linger in my mind.